The Pulse
Anthropic Opens Singapore Office and Signs Government AI MOU
Anthropic opened its fifth Asia-Pacific office in Singapore on October 14, 2026, and signed an AI cooperation MOU with the Ministry of Digital Development and Information. The agreement covers AI safety, model evaluation, incident response
AI.info Team · Written with AI ·
“We’re committed to Singapore for the long term.”
Dale Finlay, General Manager of ASEAN at Anthropic
Anthropic opened its Singapore office on October 14, 2026, and signed a memorandum of understanding with Singapore’s Ministry of Digital Development and Information, tying its regional expansion to cooperation on AI safety and adoption. The office is the company’s fifth in Asia-Pacific, after Bengaluru, Seoul, Sydney and Tokyo. The agreement sets out work on model evaluation, AI safety and security, research into AI adoption and its effects, and responsible use across public and private sectors.
The signing took place on the sidelines of Singapore International Cyber Week. Kai Fong Chng, the ministry’s permanent secretary, signed for the government alongside Anthropic co-founder Ben Mann; Minister Josephine Teo and Anthropic Head of APAC Policy Michael Sellitto witnessed it. Anthropic says the Singapore office is open and hiring, but the announcement does not set out a headcount or a schedule for the work under the MOU.
The MOU centers on testing and incident response
Anthropic plans technical exchanges with Singapore’s AI safety, security and assurance institutions. The subjects include model evaluation, testing standards and incident response—areas where governments seek a clearer picture of how advanced models behave and where risks may emerge. The company also says it will share research and data, including material from the Anthropic Economic Index, and offer technical and policy expertise as Singapore develops AI rules.
Other stated aims include strengthening AI skills, helping small and medium-sized businesses adopt AI responsibly and supporting the government’s effort to build AI capability among public officers. Those are plans described by Anthropic, rather than a published timetable or list of funded programs. The company says its work with Singaporean institutions dates to 2023, when it joined a generative-AI evaluation sandbox run by the Infocomm Media Development Authority and the AI Verify Foundation, followed by a red-teaming project in English, Mandarin, Malay and Tamil.
Claude already has users across government and business
Anthropic says Singapore ranks second among 121 countries for Claude.ai use relative to population, with usage nearly six times higher than the country’s population alone would predict. In government, more than 1,500 engineers and technical staff at the Government Technology Agency of Singapore have adopted Claude Code, according to the company. The Cyber Security Agency of Singapore is exploring potential uses of Claude in cyber defense.
In finance, DBS uses Claude for work including software development and day-to-day productivity, while sovereign wealth fund GIC is rolling it out across investment and corporate services teams. Anthropic says regulated organizations can run Claude with in-region inference through Amazon Bedrock to meet data-processing requirements. The announcement describes deployments and explorations at different stages; it does not say every named organization has adopted the same products or uses.
Grab’s assistant puts a number on adoption
Grab uses Claude in BriX, its sales assistant. Anthropic says the tool saves Grab’s sales teams about 40,000 hours each quarter and helps surface sales opportunities. The company also names Sea, which uses Claude to support Shopee’s customer-service chatbot and help employees write and debug code, and Supabase, which is building with Claude Code.
Those examples give the office and MOU a practical setting: Anthropic already has reported business and public-sector users in Singapore, while the agreement creates channels for work with government on testing, safety and adoption. The company announced the office opening and MOU on October 14; its post provides no public deadlines for the planned exchanges or other cooperation. The Singapore office is hiring.